Don't ask Ana Kokkinos stupid questions. That was my big mistake. I loved your new film, but this friend of mine, he reckons it's, like, voyeuristic, and that it exploits downtrodden characters for entertainment purposes. What do you reckon?
Kokkinos bristles. She's no stranger to tackling 'edgy' subject matter (her previous film, Book of Revelation, concerned the plight a man who was gang raped by a group of women), and she doesn't do so glibly. If you want to challenge her, you've got to do better than that.
Her answer, 'I disagree', is swift and prickly as a whack with the rough side of a brush.
Fair enough. It's true that Blessed, which follows a day in the lives of an assortment of teenagers and their mothers, weighs disproportionately on working class angst. But like the play it was based on (which comprised four separate story strands each written by a different writer), it imbues its characters with a sense of dignity, and leaves the viewer with a feeling of hope.
'One of the things that attracted me to the play was the idea about the connection between mothers and children,' Kokkinos recalls. 'Once we hit on that as an overall theme, we were able to bind the stories together with that idea in mind.'
Act one focuses on the children. Roo (Eamon Farren) is making a quick buck starring in a solo porn film. His sister Trisha (Anastasia Baboussouras) and her friend Katrina (Sophie Lowe) are busted by the cops for truancy and shoplifting. Brother and sister Orton and Stacey (Reef Ireland and Eva Lazzaro) are runaways from an untenable home life.
In act two we relive the same day from the mothers' point of view. Roo and Trisha's widow mother Gina (Victoria Haralabidou) is increasingly anxious for the wellbeing of her wayward son. Bianca (Miranda Otto) is a flaky single mum, who loves her daughter Katrina but is stymied by a sense of inadequacy and lack of fulfillment.
'Kids at a certain age are in conflict with their parents,' says Kokkinos. 'They don't understand their parents, and in some ways they are self-obsessed.
'What we discover is that while these relationships are severely tested, all of those children, on some fundamental level, need the love of their mothers. I find that a really powerful and uplifting and incredibly hopeful element to the film.'
One of the more understated storylines concerns an adult Aboriginal man, James